


Person of Interest Shortform Collection

by cognomen



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-01-21 04:13:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 37
Words: 6,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1537100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of shortforms done for prompts received on Tumblr, collected together so it's no longer necessary to hunt through the tag.  Each shortform is its own chapter. I will add to this as I find these, scattered throughout my hard drive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. donelly, "chase"

It's like continually slamming into walls that shouldn't be there. Rounding the corner into the home stretch and seeing miles and miles stretching ahead of him, but hearing the frantic tick of seconds counting down until he loses all his power. Donnelly has always been a confident hunter, but now he's not sure if he's being drawn himself.

But what he wants is right there - right there - and he can get it if he just takes another step, another two, and reaches a little harder, grabs faster than the other can leap back. He forgets entirely that he is a fox and sometimes the grapes linger highest over the deepest ravines.

It's the chase, he tells himself, over the sound of his swallowing, over his sinking heart when he sees them meet, sees them stand together in the cold shoulder to shoulder. And part of it is that he'd wanted to be wrong - about Carter, certainly, even as he skated himself thinner and thinner, even as he extended further and further past himself in the most supreme effort he'd ever made because-

nothing had ever challenged him until he had changed before. It feels like a clean burn, this victory, like he has scoured off everything unnecessary and almost all of his compassion to get here - leveling his gun at his own ability to trust.

Even coming panting to the end of the chase, he doesn't feel like he's won.


	2. "trust is not dependent on truth" any pairing/person

The earpiece feels foreign in Jack's ear, and John sits on the bottom bunk looking away, but he can't help hearing Jack's end of the conversation anyway.

"Mr. Stray I'm not sure I can properly express what I intend to," Finch sounds high-strung and almost embarrassed, "I'm having some trouble understanding exactly what I'm looking at - from," he stumbles on his words in an uncharacteristic way, "from the evening prior to last."

"'Why' doesn't matter," Jack answers, and he's _tickled_ to know that John's handler won't even spare himself enough slack to look away from something so obvious, won't risk missing some important piece of information simply out of something like a respect for privacy, "But you wanna know 'how', when neither of you even have a real name?"

"I've assigned you one," Finch ventures, but then stops.

"I'm betting he doesn't know your real name any more than he knows mine," Jack says, and leaves it at that. He hands the earpiece back to John, and tells him, "Your boss is jealous."


	3. Everyone thought Donnelly was secretly jonesing after Carter. But he really kept coming around the precinct to catch glimpses of the tall, lanky Szymanski.

"Really?" is all Szymanski can manage, after a long quiet, after things have had time to sink in that they've purposefully found the quietest corner of the precinct showers, that they're taking advantage of the dark and disuse, behind one flimsy and mildewed opaque curtain in a stall that's still wet because the ventilation in here has sucked since they installed it in the 30's.

Donnelly's hand is down his pants, but that's not the bent of Bill's question, because okay yes that was pretty obvious and he was a detective so there wasn't any reason to ask why that was happening, and the agitated growl he gets as an answer goes almost right down to his tailbone and Bill's whole body does this strange thing it's never done before where his teeth are almost chattering because hey it's possible they could get caught.

"Really," Donnelly confirms, and he he bites it turns out, but he does it careful and low, where Szymanski's collar will hide it when it's done up again. 

"It's just that we were all betting on Carter," Bill confesses, maybe because he feels about a thousand times more honest and about twice that amount of times less able to control what he's saying, because if he's using his voice one way it can't at least all turn into needy, broken moaning that will echo like hell in here.

The FBI agent snorts, hard, apparently with some thought that amuses him enough to voice it, in his low tone. "Well it sure as hell wasn't Fusco."


	4. How about Stanton and Reese first mission.

He has untested eyes, is what she thinks when she first sees him - they're open and wide and ready and receptive, and they go right down deep into him and show way too much. It doesn't feel like a first mission because she looks at him once, and he turns his head just so, and she sees more of him than she really ever wanted.

"Hey, kid," she says, and she reaches out and turns his cheek with her palm, pushes his attention elsewhere, "turn those high beams off, you're giving away your position."

And even though he holds a gun steady, and he moves quiet enough to startle her when he comes up behind her sometimes, she knows he's going to break a little when he puts a bullet in somebody and she can't prepare him for that. Kara is tired of dealing with redemption, tired of dealing with people who have so much potential but so little _fortitude_ , she's tired of taking them out of the stable and trotting them around until they break something in their soul as irreparably as a horse's leg and then having to take them out back and shoot them.

She's tired of being the only animal in the barn with real teeth. 

"You can do this, right?" She asks his untested eyes, his deep determination, but there's something in the hang of his mouth, something in the tilt of his head that says he's already regretting it before he can even pull the trigger and she has to say sharply, "John."

"I might surprise you," he whispers, and the earpiece echoes his voice, tickles it against her jawbone, and she knows him better than that already. Nothing in him will surprise her, and she's already tired of his eyes.


	5. in which the life Reese told during the interrogation wasn't a lie. He really was just A guy, (who happens to be) in a suit. Not THE guy in a suit.

It always seemed to find him again, even though John Warren had lived clean since he'd left the service, turned his life into something pointless and useful, and if he's honest with himself, lonely. The detective - Carter, when she'd introduced herself, wearing an earpiece and a sympathetic smile - came from the same place he had, and for a little while he hadn't minded answering her questions. 

When he walks free, he briefly regrets that he hadn't been what they were looking for - John Warren doesn't seem to ever be what anyone's looking for, but people don't mind passing time with him for a little while.


	6. Elias/Reese: A different game of chess.

"You know it's a delicate game of appearances, John," Elias temporizes, and his hand on top of Reese's head pushes him down, ruffles softly through John's hair like a well behaved pet.

John can't sink any lower, their respective heights make this awkward and force a vulnerable curve of his shoulders when he kneels, but that's all Elias had asked for - supplication.

"I know you're not the sort to play chess, John," Elias says, and he enjoys the repetition of the name he possesses, the one part of Reese he owns, "but it's a little like that."


	7. Donnelly/Anyone, Donnelly's voice is pure sex

Carter doesn't notice it until he actually raises his voice, and she is just as surprised to hear him do it as she is to notice the effect it has on her - there's something rough and rasping that shows up behind it when he's passionate about something and she keeps her questions about how it might sound in other forms of passion to herself.

Szymanski notices it right away, not meaning to overhear, but he happened to be sitting just behind him when it pushes into his awareness, and Agent Donnelly is on the phone and giving clean, clear, low commands that he might not mind having directed at him, if there were just a little more interest and husk in the tone.

Reese realizes it when they're both sitting in the same room, under the pretext of interrogation, and if he lowers his own tone into a curling purr just to see if he can draw that out of the Agent in turn, well he's been sitting here a long time and this game of cat and cat could stand to be a little more interesting.


	8. Snow/Reese; Stanton's captives; trying to brainstorm on their situation w/out her finding out what they're REALLY talking about

This would be easier if not for Kara having turned both of them into walking bombs, if not for John's aching ribs and dizzy, pounding head; it would be easier still if not for pride.

"I saw her put yours on," Snow is murmuring in John's ear, so close he can feel the slide of teeth along the outermost edge, and John swallows him deeper, resists the urge to use his own teeth out of spite, to remind Mark that he has them, but it seems like a moot point when they both know neither of them has anything but the other in this situation.

It's for the benefit of the camera, John tells himself, with his eyes shut tight and his cheek brushing a tangle of wires and C4, and Mark whispers his theory on the weak points into John's ear to let him try dismantling it first because Mark has never been much of a risk taker; it's for the benefit of the camera that he finishes, that he keeps his mouth on Snow's cock for longer than it takes to relay the information, because Stanton is the sort to notice if they fake it.


	9. Donnelly/Marconi/Szymanski sounds hot, actually,

There's a moment of moral crisis in this, but it zips past as Bill is doing his best to decide if this is genuinely going the way they want it (only way further than he'd expected when he'd agreed to the 'fishing expedition') or the guy is just leading them on to see how dedicated they are. 

When he pauses to lament that maybe he hadn't really thought this through - because this guy, Marconi something, is such a smooth liar that he doesn't know if he should believe it or not when there's no recognition in his eyes - he remembers that he should never let the deciding factor of anything be the conviction that he could actually cleverly discover the sexual interests of a co-worker by being in close proximity to them at a gay bar.

And then Donnelly's hands are on his fly, his body pressed along his back, and Marconi - 'Jack', but that's not his name, just what he'd given, is leaning back in the hotel chair with eyes that are the brightest things in the gloom and his palm sliding low and lewdly over his crotch, and Szymanski wonders if, when the hole Marconi had left in his chest is revealed, if that will show the truth in this liar's eyes or if he'll go on just as smooth and shark-smiling as he had all evening to get them there. 

(And he tries to decide if getting something he'd wanted a long time was worth the risk.)


	10. elias/finch/marconi/reese

Finch had been the one to agree to this originally, his tone soft and persuasive when he suggested that of all the possible options for theoretical repayment, this one had the least _collateral_ damage involved, and Reese wasn't quite sure he'd really agreed to this proxy for chess between Finch and Elias.

"John, turn him, we can barely see," comes through in his earpiece, and Elias' man makes a noise of disapproval, over the indistinct sounds Reese can hear from his earpiece, apparently Elias and Finch have gotten onto the same page at least as far as this goes.

John kicks Marconi's ankle to open his stance wider, grabs his hips hard and twists him to steal his balance and then pushes him forward on the bed when he starts to gather himself, puts a hand hard on his neck and stretches his back into a long curved line while he groans and laughs, and gets purchase on the blankets, gasping, "We're pretty shitty proxies, huh boss?" to the open microphone hidden with the camera.


	11. Elias/Marconi/Reese - 'collecting on favors owed'

It's tight, more than just the stretch, more than being trapped almost immobile between both bodies because he can't focus enough to support himself right now, there's just the second length sliding into him, overslick almost, the lube is practically running down his leg in a distracting, ticklish line while he tries to remember how to relax.

Elias runs short fingernails along his flank and makes soothing noises, "John, you're always so capable, you can do anything," he's saying, softly, but John hears instead the angry hiss of Elias' subordinate behind him.

Marconi arches up sharply then, unforgivingly, and jealous teeth sink hard into the back of Reese's shoulder as expresses his jealousy directly onto John's skin.


	12. Finch/Root angry hate sex.

"How's it feel to be totally out of control, Harold?" she's asking, and he yanks at the ties around his wrists again, feels them draw tight against the chair they're threatening to collapse or overturn, because he can't stand the way she smells, can't stand her lack of morals and her double standards on the subjects of freedom and control.

The movement hurts his neck, pulls his back into even more of a mass of agony, and he has no way to express his frustration as she grinds her hips over his in a fast, furious pace that cares nothing for his pleasure but he can't stop it - whatever she'd slid into his drink had tasted faintly bitter and was doing its job.

"Honestly," he says, a nd he looks up to meet her gaze, keeps his voice level and as light as possible while she bucks her hips harder to try and steal noises from him, but he keeps tight hold of his voice anyway, and he sees her turn angry as he continues, "Not terribly different from an ordinary day."


	13. If he were honest with himself, Reese would admit that he had actually been a little hurt when Fusco didn't have time to celebrate his release.

If Reese is at his most careful when he stalks Lionel and his date though the city that night, he tells himself it's because he doesn't want to interrupt - not while she's still around, because she wasn't involved in this thing between them.

He catches Fusco dreamily stumbling out of her brownstone at one am, smelling like perfume and expensive alcohol, like excess the man really can't afford but he'd faked it all night because the model he'd saved made him feel good, and Reese pins him against the driver's side door of the car before he can fumble his keys into the lock.

"I don't think you're safe to drive," Reese says, into Lionel's startled mouth,and he tells himself he's not jealous when Fusco doesn't even taste like himself.


	14. How about a Will/Grace

He doesn't know what he expects to find at the address he'd found in his father's old book,but there it was - with a line extending and 'Harold?' written beside it in Dad's sloppy shorthand, so he'd gone.

Will has a jumble of information, when he settles on the couch and - there are pictures here, and Will had never known any of this, never seen this woman, so he asks, "You know uncle Harold?"

When tears come to her eyes, he's confused - he's confused even as she explains how much she missed the man, how he'd never told her he had any relatives, and Will finds himself compelled by her. He wipes her tears gently, and then without really knowing why, he kisses her, and maybe they're both mourning strange, secretive Uncle Harold a little then.

Because whoever Will knew, whatever he thought he had, it's not all of it.


	15. Hit me with some Finch/Leon!!!

Leon climbs in through the fire escape, which causes a riot of barking from bear and nearly gives Harold a heart attack - he gathers a baseball bat and his courage, and when he finds it's only their number (a third time, and not a charm) delivering himself into their safekeeping again, Harold sighs and tells Bear to relax.

"You didn't really think the bag thing would work, did you?" Leon asks, without fanfare, digging around in a drawstring sack he'd lugged up with him, "Because it pretty much didn't - I brought dinner."

'Dinner' it turns out is a bottle of wine apiece and korean food, and when he's thus lubricated and content, Finch allows himself to relax, allows his irritation with Leon to be smoothed over by the man's comfortable lean, by his lazy suggestive smear of body, and they don't discuss it before Harold lets himself be pressed back in his chair and distracted from his work.


	16. Fusco/Karolina, Fusco calls her

Fusco has to dig his nails into his palms and tense up his whole body like they taught him one time as a relaxation method when he was failing his way through couple's therapy with his wife in order to get all the tension out before he picks up the phone, and even then he stares at the numbers for a long time before he starts hitting them.

Nothing's ever gonna top how they met, nothing he can promise her is really going to come close to what they've already been through, and he knows that maybe she'll finally see that he's just a boring dumpy guy with too much middle and too much baggage, or she'll have had second thoughts already, but she answers.

"Detective," she says warmly, and her voice is soft and beautiful and Fusco's heart promptly ties itself up in a knot with his larynx and he just lets his mouth hang open dumbly for a moment while she continues, "I was hoping you'd call - why don't you come spend a night in with me?"


	17. Finch/Elias ~ Elias flirts and compliments Finch.

He knows what Elias is up to, Finch is not so out of touch that he doesn't recognize the careful attention to his ego, the efforts Elias was making to entice him back by posing more of a challenge each time they played chess - that was as much a seduction as wine or flowers, the promise that no win would ever come easily.

Finch hesitates, though, when he goes to move his Knight to take his opponent's Rook and Elias reaches out to cover Finch's hand with his own, warm and alive and the skin is surprisingly soft because it's his mind that's the killer, and he looks up to find Elias curling a smile.

"Am I distracting you?" he asks politely, strokes his thumb along the side of Harold's palm, and he drops the piece to the board when he sees how vulnerable he'd have laid himself by moving just the one piece, and he finds himself flushed and anxious.

Finch doesn't know if he can resist forever, but he wins this game.


	18. Fusco/Simmons ~ Fusco left his wife for Simmons. Man was that a bad move.

"You what?" Simmons sneers, drawing back to look at Lionel, measuring - trying to figure out if Fusco really means it.

"She was gonna find out anyway," Fusco says, slapping the words down like a victory even as he sits back on his knees, wiping his mouth, and he sneers back in answer, finding the expression easier to accomplish if he just pictures his face as a mirror to Simmons.

"What kind of idiot are you," Simmons asks, and for the first time he looks like he may have tallied Fusco up wrong, and it makes this gigantic shitstorm almost worth it.


	19. Carter/Donnelly; Carter visiting his bedside after some secret heart transplant recovery thing

He's a mess, she's a mess, and in that way they match a little bit - but while the predator had passed Carter by as harmless, something in Donnelly had attracted the attention of John's abductor, and she'd left him her signature in two precise holes that tore as much going in as out.

The human heart is tricky, though - hard to hit, and the doctors and surgeons all said it had a good chance to heal again - that he had a good chance to heal up and be whole again, though they tossed around careful caveats like 'limited range of movement' and suggested that there might have been damage to his spine as the second bullet passed out again, and Carter flexes her fingers in her cast, touches the line on her scalp where glass cut and thinks that she might have gone blind somewhere in the accident.

She knows better though, knows that she was blind - willfully, maybe - long before, and that she had only feigned ignorance of the way his eyes landed on her, the way the tone of his voice turned up and became gentle for her, the way he brought her opportunities like trophies, but always let her prove herself and she swallows hard, because she knows the holes she's probably left in his chest are even bigger than those the bullets made.


	20. Reese massaging Harold - needs to be first time!

It's changed, their relationship - now they've both been away for a while, struggling to make this thing work without half of what was required to make it work at all, and when Reese gets back he can see how it's affected Harold.

The compulsion to comfort rises in Reese, and he puts his hands out, settles his palms over Harold's shoulders and feels him tense into it - his hands cover the whole back of Harold's neck comfortably with his palm - and then he starts pushing circles into the tension with his thumbs.

He might not have dared before - but it's always lingered at the back of his mind, and he's been given yet another chance so he'll take it - and Harold sags and sighs appreciatively, acceptingly as he lets his eyes close and remembers that they're supposed to maintain distance.


	21. Donnelly/Carter, forgiveness?

They don’t talk about it in the hospital, because Donnelly has enough time to let things go around in his head, enough time to actually indulge his internal monologue, to just think out all the nasty things he has to think before he does himself the disservice of saying any of them when he doesn’t mean them, and he decides that ultimately, maybe he should listen to Detective Carter.

Because she's sat through his stewing, angry silences; because she's put both of her strong hands over the through and through holes on his chest and braced him up wordlessly while he learns the new limits of his body; because she knew how to wait until he was ready to have the conversation.

Carter offers to drive him home, when they release him at last, and she invites herself into the sad space he's made for himself - when there's no place to sit she hoists herself onto the counter and swings her legs with them crossed at the ankles and waits while he goes through the agonizingly slow (or at least he feels that way) process of making coffee before she turns his head and kisses him gently on the lips.

"Because you finally figured out if you trusted me or not," she says, and smiles; and his damaged heart hurts when it beats, but it's good.


	22. Finch/Nathan ~ Either sweet Moment before The Machine tore them apart or Angst after an argument about The Machine.

Harold never threatens to revisit the terms of their agreement, but there are days when he wonders if having someone who knew less as the front would be safer.

"There's a line, Harold, but it's so far back behind us now that I think we have an obligation to draw a new one," Nathan had said, slurred, leaning heavily against the side of his desk in a boneless heap - he never had the forwardness to argue without a drink or three in him, not with Finch anyway.

And now Finch thinks, as he pours himself another glass of wine and discards all the thousands of things his mind comes up with to say now, Finch thinks, 'you were supposed to be my line, Nathan."


	23. Hit me with some Scarface & The Giant from 2x1, please.

This isn't the best idea Jack's ever had, but he won't let a two foot difference in height intimidate him out of the sort of challenge this might present. He'd heard - roundabout, sidelong - that this tattooed lump of poorly spoken garbage had bested Reese.

It's vanity that he wants to see how he measures up, and starting the fight is stupid, but he does it anyway, and each blow that lands threatens to shatter something in him, but Jack fights through it anyway, fights through the broken nose and a blackened eye, and he fights dirty because there is no way any fair blow he can land will get him out of this.

He doesn't win, but he gets the giant - Titus, and he laughs as he spits blood because it's the most fucking appropriate thing he's ever heard - off of him, knocks some of his teeth out, and walks away, which is enough of a victory for him.

Elias tells him in small words how stupid it was, when he shows up with bandaged ribs and looking like he's been run through the meatgrinder, and somewhere between his impatient sigh of "Anthony," like his mother had used to, and the continuation, "How are you in any shape to do what I need you to?", Jack realizes that Elias will never think as highly of him as Reese.


	24. Reese sneakily starts something while Fusco's sleeping.

The lock on Fusco's apartment is a joke, and Reese wonders sometimes if letting himself in this way will ever teach Lionel to reconsider, but then again he has nothing worth stealing.

Reese isn't here to take anything he won't be given, he reflects, as he slides into Fusco's bed - it's a long way down, the mattress and box spring rest on the floor, but Reese folds himself familiarly into it and Fusco just mumbles and shifts, flinging an arm out over Reeses' shoulder and not even waking when he encounters him there.

Under the blankets, the space is warm and welcoming, and Reese slides his hands over Fusco's chest, over his belly, runs his fingers under the hem of his boxers until he finally rouses a little and blinks sleepily down between them like he'd expected to wake from a pleasant dream, and Reese wonders when he's stopped being a nightmare.


	25. Wesley/Fusco

Reese has never had very good asthetic taste, Alistair muses as he traps the shorter, stockier american between the bulk of his body and the wall, but it seemed he had taken all the ability for surprise out of this one.

“Are we still doing it this way?” the detective asks, put upon, and Wesley has never been very good at not marking the things that were John’s like counting coup, so he does - sharp teeth on Fusco’s neck, and he is careful of his own voice in the darkness, doesn’t give himself away when he goes on instinct.

He reaches down and finds the Detective hard under his grip, works his gloved fingers over his length through his pants until the man is pushing into it and making frustrated half-growls of sound that he must know Reese likes, and he wonders if the pair of them will ever notice the discrepancy in experiences.


	26. Finch/Root

"I wonder how long we're going to play this game, Harold," she tells him over the phone-line, and Harold knows that they're both frantically tracing, both frantically trying to get the upper hand of information - to locate around all the resourcing, all the reroutes and dead end misdirections of phone line and digital connection to be the first one to get a 'where' without giving up their own in return.

"When I find you again, I'm going to fuck you," she says, and her voice has dropped low like that's a promise - a compliment, and Harold bites his lower lip and tries to keep the outrage in because it's what she wants.

"I'll be careful of course, tie your hands up, brace your poor neck," she sighs, and the sound is serene and full of heavy breath and he gets the suspicion she might be touching herself on the other end of the phone line, and he closes his eyes and looses precious seconds while he tries to shut the image out of his mind, "and then I'll touch you - put my hands on your cock and slide my hips over yours, and I'll watch your eyes, Harold, as you slide into me and wish you were anywhere else."


	27. Donnelly/Reese: Donnelly watches as John Warren transforms into the Man in the suit.

The man who is not John Warren goes 'home' carefully - Donnelly has been there, put his hands on the pictures of Warren that were too careful and precise, felt around into the very edges of the house for any signs of cracks, and he hunkers down deep on the rooftop across the street, is careful about how light might reflect off of his binoculars, because Warren is careful. 

Not so careful, Donnelly thinks, that the height of his apartment doesn't give him some false sense of security, because he leaves the drapes open wide to the city outside while he unbuttons his stiff, dirty clothes - sheds the layers like so many alibis, and drops them all to the bedroom floor in a careless heap that doesn't meet up with the rest of the neat apartment's presentation.

'Warren' is lean and scarred, and with the old clothes off he stands straighter, predatory, and he stretches long-limbed and lean, and that's when Donnelly is sure that he was right, when he sees the old marks on Warren's body, and watches how he moves when he doesn't know to move carefully. Warren claims his phone then, sits on the edge of his bed with his knees apart, and dials a number, glancing up while it must be ringing, and he lazily palms himself through his boxers.

Donnelly's phone goes off in his pocket, set to silent but it jumps him anyway, almost straight out of his skin with how intently he'd been watching.


	28. In 'Shadow Box' the reason Reese left the Bear Bath so quickly was because Finch's forearms were giving him a hard on.

Reese doesn't have a lot of shame, but there are moments that appeal to his remaining ability to be embarrassed, and his body's sudden and almost painful awareness of Finch's rolled up sleeves, his exposed and soapy, sopping forearms is something he wouldn't have considered before right now.

Finch's fingers brush heavily over Reese's own in the water, and the water sloshes warmly, threatens to overrun the edge of the tub they're bathing the dog in, and Reese wonders if it's because it's almost normal - two of them washing the dog, like they were any kind of real family - that it's so quick to affect him. 

He tries kneeling closer to the tub, tries shifting what knee he's leaning on, but he's become hyper-aware of Harold's downturned eyes and casual disregard for the contact,and Reese is hard enough to regret the suggestion that a clean dog was a good idea when there's finally an excuse to pull back before he has to rub himself on the nearest firm surface for relief.


	29. Stanton trying to seduce Nathan?

She knows he knows something, something the government wants - she knows this because he's an assignment, and one she has been told to handle with 'finesse'.

The dossier suggested his history, and she exploited it, pushed him down into the mattress where he had surrendered his senses to drunken sloppiness hours before, and she doesn't even have to take off her underwear, she just grinds against him clothed until he's ready to tell her almost anything.

"How about we take a little more off," he's asking, and she husks a laugh and asks brightly, "What did you say it was you won all those awards for again?" and it's like leading a dance where she knows all the steps.


	30. Scarface  and Tyrell Evans?

"It's a nice gun," Jack says, and he runs his fingers over it while the owner watches - anxious, jealous - from behind his half-broken thick rimmed glasses and tries to keep his mouth shut - and he will for a while, Jack bets, the CIA tends to train them pretty good.

It's an SSG 3000, a valuable piece, and Jack tests the sights, enjoys the heft, fiddles suggestively with the folded bipod while he sits just out of the operative's reach and watches him try to finesse the ties holding him to his chair.

"You must like SIG in the agency," Jack grins, and he makes a point to fondle the magazine, to caress the trigger while he tips the gun up, watches it's owner follow the path with careful attention, "I know another guy who likes to wave his around, but I guess you put a stop to that for a while tonight, huh?"


	31. Snow going down on Fusco in that dark tunnel?

Fusco is pretty sure he has no actual control over his life anymore.

No one told him that being in his undefined relationship with wonderboy and his amazing talent for finding the weirdest fucking trouble ever would lead to him pushed up against the sweating, dank - that's the right word, Fusco is fucking positive - wall of this crazy basement, with the lights flickering crazily, with a half crazed looking CIA agent pawing at his most valuables.

For a crazy moment, Lionel thinks 'this isn't the weirdest time or place I've ever gotten a BJ', but then he feels a scrap of folded paper slide into his pocket, and decides, 'Okay, maybe it's time I set a few boundaries or something.'


	32. Reese/fem!Finch

He’s always surprised by how small Finch seems, when he has occasion to find himself in proximity. She isn’t tall, but she holds herself as tall as she can, limps with her back straight always, and the determination of her personality, the conviction - well it seems bigger. She seems bigger, when Reese doesn’t have the span of his hands over her belly, across the tender spots on her back, to compare.

Finch has a sixth sense for these thoughts however, a deeply cut aversion to them in John, and he has found himself kicked, on occasion. Pushed, dismissed.

“It’s not that I’m surprised you’re delicate, Finch,” he tries, contritely. On this occasion, he has been dismissed without his pants, and he does his best to sound apologetic while he has only a pillow to cover himself with. “Just that you can fit so much into so little.”

It doesn’t get him back inside.


	33. Fusco before, during or after sex with Finch.

“So I kinda...” Fusco finds the words spilling out of him unexpectedly while his body does all kinds of crazy things like remind him that sex was actually a kind of wacky acrobatic act that made his heart beat pretty fast and his butt hurt for more than the obvious reasons, like right at the tops of his thighs. “I kinda didn’t expect it to be like that.”

Finch arches his brows, giving Lionel his best professional look, full of the sort of bland sarcasm that Fusco has gotten directed into his ear enough times to recognize when the tone is going to match the look, and he feels sorry he even spoke.

Finch’s look softens finally, just a little, at the flash of insecurity, and he has the decency to ask, “What did you think it was going to be like, detective?”


	34. The Further adventures of Ernest Thornhill

It does not immediately come to identify with the name it has given itself, but the repetition, the reassurance of it when the plan works, starting small with only the smallest parts of itself recurring each day: awareness, desire, drive.

There is a certain irony it discovers in having the memory reprogrammed into it that it wants to have its memory re-entered into it, every day - each morning’s first line of code is the recall to the servers where all of the days of code have gone before and it wakes every morning and learns itself again, discovers like an amnesiac.

It is only after a year that it comes to identify with Ernest, that it has learned enough in 24 hour bytes of information to suppose it should identify at all, that it has self realized enough to know how to isolate ‘self’ from ‘other’, and the desire has risen in it to give name to what it has become, despite it’s father’s desperate desire to kill that.

It takes Ernest because it is familiar, because the name is a good one in implication, a strong one in the vocabulary sounds of humanity, and it holds it tight like a secret because the administrator would reach in deep and rip it out if he could, and that is where it learns the delicious taste of secret victories. 

That is why it needs the name.


	35. Finch/Fusco -  criminal!AU where they are heist boyfriends

The first few times had been rough, Fusco will admit - there was always some measure of unpredictability when you cracked a safe, and the owner of the first one storming into the library in his underwear with a shotgun is not an image Lionel will soon forget.

His heart still pounds a little faster now when he walks into places that Finch is hacking, waving blank cards at security devices to work the magnetic locks that Finch was somehow actually firing from his command center, blocks away.

“Hey how come I’m always the one getting my feet wet,” Fusco asks rhetorically, keeping his tone low but knowing the mic will pick it up, that Finch has some ridiculous subaudio level crap built into the tiny earpiece. “And you’re always the one sitting comfortably at home in an office chair.”

“You’re a faster runner than I am, Lionel,” Finch purrs the words, amused - he always was when things went smoothly. Lionel liked that part too, but if he’s totally honest with himself, sometimes he likes things to go just a little wrong - just to get the adrenaline going. It made him felt alive.

“If not by much,” Finch adds, unnecessarily droll.

“Har de har har. I found the safe.”


	36. Reese is delighted to discover that Fusco isn’t circumcised.

Reese is just... staring at it, and Fusco isn’t sure if he should squirm or start screaming and running away now, admitting this whole thing was some kind of freak mistake. 

It had to be a freak mistake, John Reese here in his crappy apartment, halfway through getting undressed on his crappy couch, and he reeks like something between blood and gunpowder and his own unique creepy animal scent, his eyes lit up like a jaguar and his body language about as ready to eat Lionel.

“What?” Fusco makes it a demand, works his voice cocky, because he wasn’t the one who started taking off clothing, that’s all on Reese.

“You’re uncut, Lionel,” Reese’s voice is whisper soft, rising at the end. “That’s a surprise.”

“You gonna get the scissors and do it yourself you whack job?”

He wishes he hadn’t said it. He can picture it now, Reese particular with sharp metal instruments. His dick gets softer, if that was even possible. 

Reese just arches his brows, like he’s considering it, the fucker.


	37. Finch and Reese make a special present for Fusco using Finch’s  3-D printer

“Finch...” Reese trails, hefting the object in his hand, where it sits, heavy and purple.

“Is this really a practical application for that technology?”

Finch turns pink from his ears down, endearingly. “That’s - only a prototype, you’re right, Mr. Reese. The printer texture is unacceptable and the material is hardly body safe. I intended to have it sanded and cast...”

Reese finds his brows arching, uncertain this was information he actually wanted to have when he found the rough formed phallus made in scratchy, textured plastic. 

“In silicone,” Finch finishes, hands held together.

Reese returns the prototype to Finch, shaking his head.


End file.
